


Timeout!

by NorthwesternInsanity



Category: Music RPF, REO Speedwagon
Genre: Angst, Dirty Jokes, Dirty-Minded Jokes WARNING, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Sports, Teasing, injuries, snide comments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-06-02 07:37:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19436887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorthwesternInsanity/pseuds/NorthwesternInsanity
Summary: "Neal's one of the smarter ones in the band; he's the only one who hasn't had a major injury [from basketball]" ~Gary Richrath, MTV Good Trouble special. A short series of one-shots about some of the injuries listed by Gary, sustained in play, and the resulting hurt/comfort, fluff, and copious teasing ensued between bandmates.Installment 1: It's just the start of the recording sessions for Nine Lives, and already, bassist Bruce Hall is down to eight. At least he's earned his status as a permanent member of REO Speedwagon with his battle wounds!





	1. Torn Tendon -Bruce Hall

Manager Tom Consolo -"Tommy", as he was casually known by the boys he looked out for in REO Speedwagon -blew his whistle across the basketball court outside the studio as Bruce Hall came down from a jump, landed funny when he caught one of the engineer's sneakers with his toe before striking the pavement, and had his knees give out. The momentum sent him flying forward ahead of his feet, and he went sprawling to the ground, skidding to a stop on his extended forearms after his knees took a hard, initial impact.

_"Timeout!"_

Neal Doughty watched from the sidelines, slightly buzzed on alcohol, but still aware of the happenings as the ball slammed out of play and came bouncing toward him. It finally slowed to a stop underneath the splintery, old bench he perched on to watch the action he chose not to be part of in favor of sitting back to watch.

For _many_ reasons. This being just one of them.

Bruce, being the newest player in REO Speedwagon -but not a stranger to them before he'd replaced Gregg Philbin -had yet to be in many of the serious kind of games that came in the middle of recording sessions to release pent up energy and frustration before nailing a part became impossible to focus on. 

On their last album, which they had named _You Can Tune a Piano, but You Can't Tune a Fish_ for the sake of stating they could take a terrible musical pun, they'd been moving studios from Illinois to California as well as changing bassists. The fun and games had been absent in favor of moving equipment and settling into their new permanent arrangement, as well as taking care of other frustrations that came with moving. While that worked too -because everyone was excited to get back to working with instruments over working through moving tasks -it hadn't been the best for morale.

Now with the recording of _Nine Lives_ , the games returned.

Bruce lifted his arms from the pavement to inspect the nasty friction burns and blood he would have to endure cleaning out, sighed with resignation to that torture, and started to pull in his knees so he could plant his toes and hop up from the ground.

Then something spasmed in his left knee, and he dropped right back down just as fast as he'd started to rise up with a quiet groan.

Feet appeared in front of Bruce's line of sight over his bloodied arms, in boots rather than athletic sneakers.

"It ain't a ballgame until somebody gets hurt, is it, Bruce?" Neal spoke in his unreadable, deadpan voice.

"Guess it didn't take long for me to find out."

Tommy called from the side of the court against the building. "What do we need over there, Trout?"

Neal shrugged with his signature nonchalant stance. "Depends on how much tough love you want to give him. You tell me, Tom."

Bruce, despite the stinging up his forearms and the creaking in his left knee, began laughing where he lay on the ground.

Gary Richrath came over and shook his head. 

"You be quiet, Neal," he scolded, even though he was also grinning. "Better at least have a towel if we want to get inside without leaving a red trail. Maybe some ice would be good too. Holy shit, what the hell did you manage to do to yourself, Brucester?"

Bruce rolled over on his back and sat up.

"You know, one of you should tell me what happened," he retorted, before springing a perfect imitation of innocent puppy eyes. "Don't ask me; I don't know what just happened there."

"You started to take a face plant, but tried to save yourself with your arms and knees," said Alan Gratzer, crossing the court, carrying a roll of paper towels passed from inside by Tommy. "You got yourself pretty good, kid. You're looking a mess!"

"That is right," realized Kevin Cronin as he popped up behind Gary. "Now that we have Bruce here, I'm not the kid in the band anymore."

"You're still young enough that I can take you out of this band just as easily as I got you in," warned Neal.

Bruce cracked up on the ground.

"Alright, clearly you're gonna be fine, even if you are probably gonna have to take it easy for a few days. You don't need to lose a second one of your nine lives when you just lost the first." With Alan's help, Gary pulled Bruce up from the ground, and though limping with a visible struggle to fully straighten his left leg, Bruce successfully walked inside unaided to clean his battle scars, which he proudly left on display once the bleeding stopped.

Two days later though, Bruce found that the party definitely wasn't over when he showed up to the studio with a brace on his left knee -and earned himself immediate interrogation.

"Ah-HA! You have on engineering," teased Gary. "You actually did get yourself pretty good!"

"Alright, Brucester, what did you do?" Alan mock-scolded. "What's the verdict? Tell us what they found at the crime scene."

"I kept feeling clicking and it wanting to give out when I first stood up, so I figured I'd better get it checked out before it became anything bigger than it is," admitted Bruce. "Tore the patellar tendon. Not all the way -they're expecting it'll heal up on its own if I do as they told me. Which I will, most of the time at least."

Tommy started clapping from across the studio, to Bruce's visible -and rather amusing -confusion.

"Congratulations!" hollered Kevin. "You are now OFFICIALLY a member of REO Speedwagon!" 

"You see, playing on an album wasn't enough," explained Alan. "You gotta earn your stripes -or a major battle wound. Extra points if you can laugh through the pain! Only Neal gets out of that one, because he was there to start it -or at least for now. Maybe we'll pull him into it some day."

"Oh sure, keep dreaming, Gratzer. You're still _lost in a dream_ , and that was what, three albums ago?"

Bruce sighed, sat down and leaned against the mixing board.

"So you're saying that at least I'm not gonna be the only one of us down for the count this session," he stated, trying to keep a straight face while talking as he held back bashful laughter.

Gary snorted and clapped Bruce on the shoulder.

"Oh, kiddo, you ain't seen nothing yet."

"We'd like to think that's it, but we all know better," agreed Tommy. "Neal's seen enough to give you the lowdown.

Neal shrugged from where he stood leaning in the doorway.

"Just makes you wonder who's gonna be _next..."_

[To be continued]


	2. Broken Elbow -Gary Richrath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Installment 2: In the early demo recording stages of _Hi Infidelity_ , Gary's temper gets the best of him on the court, and he sustains an injury that may pose a problem... as if the band weren't in enough pain already! The only lady known to the band who isn't breaking hearts is their beloved studio housekeeper. With relationship troubles plaguing Neal, Kevin, and Gary, and with Neal sheltered at Bruce's house while in the throes of a nervous breakdown, mass upset and angst abounds at the studio. Lots of hurt/comfort results!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liz Frye is characterized based on how she appears in the "Wheels Are Turnin -MTV special". Anyone who has a problem with her characterization can go check it out on YouTube and judge for themselves.

Almost everyone in the entirety of the band had made the remark that the album in-progress they planned to name _Hi Infidelity_ , spelled irregularly to pull a pun on 'Hi-Fi' recording systems, should have been named "High Incapacity."

The band was in a world of hurt upon getting home, looped into relationship troubles left and right.

Kevin's wife had admitted to having major affairs in the past while dealing with a current relationship strain, and while he was determined to push through the rough patch, leave the past behind, and hold everything together, it was visible to everyone else that bad trouble lay ahead for their singer. Life at home was coming unglued, and the emotional torment in his cathartic lyrics showed everything he pretended to not be the case.

Gary was stricken with similar problem, but his girlfriend wasn't so honest about _her_ problems with him. She instead took herself on the run and disappeared for days at a time whenever he tried to talk it over. That left the concern hanging over Gary's head whether their relationship would stabilize, or if she'd decided she couldn't deal with the rock and roll lifestyle he was a part of -which he understood well enough and had accepted that potential ending. Dragging out inevitable heartache was another thing though. He didn't pretend that the unusual direction of his own lyrics wasn't driven by wanting a straight answer. He couldn't deny it when his broken heart plastered itself on his sleeve, so he owned it.

However, nobody had anticipated coming home from the _Nine Lives_ tour, for Neal to arrive to an empty house and a letter, announcing his wife's leaving while he was away. None of them had expected the irony and audacity for her words in that letter expressing disgust for Neal's drinking and drug use, coupled with having leaving him for a drug dealer the band knew well. Nor had they anticipated the nervous breakdown that followed, leaving their keyboardist sidelined. Nobody else could help being angry that some woman was wicked and cruel enough to bring tough-skinned, snide, and stoic Neal Doughty right down to his knees, without having the courage to face him and do it properly.

With the record company pushing a deadline and the threat of cutting ties without more than minor hits, Tommy Consolo had _hoped_ that Neal's torment would be the worst of the pain they were up against. After all, it couldn't _possibly_ get any worse if even Neal was injured -if not physically, emotionally and mentally.

It wasn't long before he found himself to be sorely mistaken.

With double the pressure during the recordings, and heartache simmering over the heat of anger, the play taken to the court outside the studio wasn't the type brought to a low-key game just for fun.

They were playing _rough_ , and nobody had the heart to tell one another to lighten up when they were all under the same gun and acting the same. The ball was thrown and slammed with twice the normal force, driven by anger. Nobody was afraid to step on toes, kick shins, and shove through tight spaces. The pain at home was so raw that the smaller pains of the game didn't register until later, when it showed in the form of everyone in the band and all the engineers sporting bruises and supportive braces and ace bandages on their elbows, knees, and wrists just from hard, repetitive play. During the first week of recording sessions, everyone was popping ibuprofen like candy.

Then the inevitable happened on a particularly rough day.

Gary came in angry from home, tried to channel his frustration out into his playing, and only succeeded in breaking two guitar strings in one take. Said take then had to be discarded, as the brand new strings would alter the tone on the rest of the track and wouldn't match.

When it came time for a break to go outside and play before everyone was slamming their heads against the wall, Gary played like a mad-man on the court. So much that Tommy jokingly called him "Riff-Wrath".

Nobody dared repeat it though when Gary suggested he didn't like it -or at least that he didn't find it as funny as he ordinarily would have under more normal circumstances. To see their normally sweet-tempered guitarist so angry was scary. Even Kevin kept quiet around him for once.

Then, when he tried to shove his way between Bruce and Alan, he caught the tip of his shoe on Alan's leg.

Alan yelped reflexively and managed to regain his balance before he could list too far. However, with the force he'd been moving forward with, Gary pitched over onto the ground. 

He scrambled to get into position to break his fall on outstretched arms, but it happened so fast that he couldn't quite make it in time. The angle of his left elbow was still too sharp when he made impact, so the very tip of his elbow collided with the pavement first, and the result was much different than the bloody forearms he'd accepted as his fate.

Stunned silence fell as Gary did too, and a small, but very audible crack reverberated across the court.

The pain -and flash of pins and needles through his arms -was so severe that Gary wouldn't later be able to tell if he'd passed out for a moment, or if he'd just seen stars. It knocked the wind out of him too, leaving him gasping noisily when he finally could draw a breath.

"TIMEOUT!" Tommy blew the whistle, and ran inside to go get the first air supplies, already knowing enough about what they were dealing with from what he'd seen.

"Timeout, DAMN IT!" Kevin slammed the ball out of play with enough fury to bounce it over the fence for some engineer to chase down, and Alan turned around on his heels to drop down next to their fallen guitarist.

"Stay down a minute," he murmured patiently. "I realize that the last month has been difficult, and the last two weeks have been especially hard for you, but you _need_ to settle the fuck down, Gary. This isn't helping."

Gary didn't respond, but lay still while panting hard. Alan rested his hand on his back while he got a grip.

Bruce leaned his head inside the door. "Lizard, we could REALLY use some backup out here -and maybe some ice too. _Please!"_

Elizabeth "Lizard" Frye, or "Liz" as they sometimes called her, was the studio housekeeper REO Speedwagon had acquired in their move to California, and while she'd quickly fallen into place with them enough to be easily seen as just one of the guys, sometimes it was hard for the band not to see her as an angel during this trying session. Having her to hold the fort down made it easier to focus on the intense rush to write and record. While it was tempting, they'd all made a wise agreement -Tommy included -that as long as she was working with them, none of them were to pursue a relationship with her that might spark jealousy and possibly tear the whole band apart.

Instead, she'd jokingly declared herself a 'combination mother-wife' who just didn't sleep with any of them. Her sense of humor was right at home surrounded by a rock band. And with all the relationship troubles at home, all of Liz's 'five husbands' were currently grateful to have some woman who understood and accepted the rock and roll craziness, knew all their habits, good or bad, and by some miracle still loved them.

At Bruce's shout, the blinds parted on one window, and a minute later, Liz was on her way outside, and then on the ground beside Gary with a bag of ice.

"Aw, man, you guys, let me tell you," she declared with playful exaggeration. "You got Trout out for the count, and now this too? How's all this happening here? Whatcha got?"

Gary kept his eyes closed as he leaned his head against Liz's shoulder.

"I love you," he murmured bitterly, wincing and gasping as Alan pushed the bag of ice to his arm with one hand and held it steady with the other. "You don't tell lies behind our backs, or refuse to give straight answers, or up and leave us while we're out on tour with a fucking, cowardly letter."

"And she manages to still love _you_ when you've been a pill all day," cracked Tommy, coming back outside with the kit and two splint sticks.

"Ouch!" cried Alan, feigning clutching his heart. "Jeez, Tommy, we're in enough pain already!"

"Hey now, if this guy's a pill, he's a _chill-pill,"_ declared Liz, patting Gary on the back and shooting a playful, evil-eye at Tommy. "His effects haven't kicked in here yet because he's making it pretty hard to _swallow_ right now, but when they do, I'll bet you all are gonna be feeling just fine. 'Cause I know you all are _happy_ he's around."

Tommy blushed as Kevin and Bruce immediately began giggling like two school-boys, entirely taken aback by the subtle, dirty joke coming from the source it had. Alan was less subtle and howled with laughter as he reached down to ruffle Liz's hair affectionately, and Liz looked at Tommy, shrugged, and then winked at the rest of the guys.

"It's been a _really_ hard week at home," said Gary. He grinned and mimed fake-crying with his good hand, but there was just enough hurt in his eyes, and the redness of unshed tears trying to well up to prove that it wasn't entirely a joking matter for him.

"It's been a really hard couple of months for all but _two_ of us," added Kevin, emphasizing it with an index finger pointed in their general direction.

Gary gasped. "Kevin, _noooo!_ Don't say that!"

"Yeah, you guys are making me feel REALLY nervous as to if I'm gonna be next." Alan cringed. "Damn, KC. Bruce and I need to knock on some wood now!"

"We'll have to go have a salt-throwing fight in the kitchen," suggested Liz, "but then you guys know we have to clean it up and put everything back after, so you all have to tell me if we're up for that."

"If Tommy would let us off the hook, I'd help clean it. That's a small mess compared to everything else," said Bruce as he pushed his way toward the door to go inside. "It won't hurt anything."

"Well, we've been working on the one song I wrote with my thoughts over that letter, and I'm still pissed at what happened to Neal after writing that -probably because he's not with us and knowing that screwed him up THAT badly. And now I'm writing some for my own situation to try and deal with _that_ mess -I'll feel better once it's done, but right now I'm stuck harping on it and-"

"Enough," said Alan. "I'm all for writing your heart out, but I think it's time to leave it home the rest of the day, before somebody else gets hurt. Or you hurt yourself any more."

Bruce came back outside with a throwaway camera and started snapping photos, taking great joy on capturing candid moments when nobody was expecting it, resulting in a collection of funny faces.

Kevin looked up at Bruce with a bewildered face. "Brucester, what the hell are you doing?" 

Bruce joyously snapped a series of pictures while the priceless look was there, made even better by the motions of his mouth frozen in frames.

"When it gets filled up and we take it to be developed, Neal might be feeling better and back with us. We'll give him a laugh at our expense."

"There you have it," said Gary with a weak grin that would surely make him look stoned on camera. "If he doesn't appreciate the song I wrote for him, then he can see that I already got payback for writing it!"

"Ah-ha!" teased Liz, earning herself a mid-speech capture, mouth curled up in a sinister grin through her exclamation. "Punishing yourself before he can get back at you, I see. Very sneaky."

"He's more likely to just be snarky with me over it. Speaking of Neal, how's he doing, Bruce? Talk to me while we do this. Distract me from the pain!"

"We'd best hope you can do that, Bruce," added Liz, visibly struggling not to laugh (making for a perfect picture!) while pursuing her lips in mock-pity and forcing a silly tone. "You already know this guy's been through too much today and doesn't need to hurt anymore. Usually Gary's too sweet for that. And I don't want to see him all grumpy in here again!"

"Well, he's gonna have to suck it up while we stabilize this," said Tommy, poking Gary in the elbow, and provoking a moan from both of them. Gary for the pain, and Tommy from the sensation of broken bone shifting on palpation. Then he opened the kit and pulled out an ace bandage to hold on the splints.

"Alright, Bruce. Tell us about Trout so he doesn't turn into a missile on me, because this isn't gonna be pleasant, and the ER won't be much better."

"It's hard to say when it hasn't been very long, but I at least think he's coming along well," said Bruce, before knocking on the wooden post of the basketball hoop. "And you know, someone tell me what else we should knock on, because I'm tired of knocking on wood -I'm done with it. It feels like it hasn't done us any favors lately!"

Everyone promptly cracked up as Alan ran over and gave Bruce a noogie on the head. 

"Does this seem like something solid enough to knock on?!"

"I think it's great if you ask me," piped up Kevin, striking a pose with a funny face then as Bruce turned his camera at him. "No more knocking on wood -just on a hard head!"

"Brucester? A hard head with as sweet as he is? You guys are kidding me." Liz's remark succeeded in getting Bruce laughing and blushing harder.

"He maybe spends three nights out of the week with me now -sometimes he comes over with me, and sometimes I go to him. And neither of us touch an instrument while we're in the same room. Any playing he does is for his own entertainment -not focusing on work instead of getting better."

"Do you have to drag him to therapy kicking and screaming?" Tommy shot a sinister grin. "I had a hard time believing him when he agreed to do it -he must be pretty desperate."

"We'll just say he calls it a necessary evil," Bruce decided, shaking his head. "He doesn't like it, but he was a lot more comfortable with it the last go round than he was the first time. Maybe that's from not being a complete stranger with his doctor, or because he's feeling a little more optimistic -I don't know. But it's finally starting to do him some help. Or maybe he's subconsciously scrambling to get better on his own so he can get out of it sooner. That works too!"

"Whatever floats the boat," Alan agreed.

"Night terrors? Is he still having any of those?" Gary's smile fell away as he asked, leaving him crestfallen. "That one night at your place was awful, Bruce. None of us have ever seen him like that -it still makes me _so mad_ -"

Kevin shrunk back behind Bruce, and as a warning, Alan clapped his hands together hard. 

"No, don't start talking that way again; _chill out."_

As Tommy worked the splints around Gary's elbow, immobilizing it, Liz pulled the ice bag away and set it on top of Gary's mass of curls just to make their point.

"So Bruce isn't a hard head, but Gary IS a hot head!" Just as soon, Kevin had recovered.

"Every once in awhile," said Bruce, fighting through chuckles as he snapped a picture of Gary with the ice bag. "If he's with me, he'll come get me, and if he's at home, he'll call my house. Nothing like last month, and none have been like that one night. Usually he just needs to hear someone talking to him so he can get out of it, and then he just goes back to sleep the rest of the night." He smiled. "Hey, if it makes you feel any better, Gary, the other night he said he misses you."

Gary smiled back, and visibly choked up. "I miss him too."

Tommy snorted as he tied the splint off and Gary earned himself another hug from Liz.

"Wait, and not any of us?" Alan leaned over Gary and Bruce and feigned jealousy.

"Yeah!" Kevin pouted beside Alan, and Bruce made the final shot to fill up the camera roll.

"You know he does," he said. "Because he's probably getting tired of me. But he's too stubborn to admit it for all of you, beyond wishing he could be here writing right now."

"Well, tell him he's _not missing a thing_ ," declared Tommy, "'cause we're leaving him plenty of room to add on whatever he sees fit to the demos when he gets back."

Kevin nodded as he and Liz helped Gary up and he volunteered to drive him to the hospital. "And I got plenty of ideas to discuss with him too!"


	3. Ankle Sprain -Alan Gratzer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Installment 3: A couple of weeks after Gary breaks his elbow, Alan Gratzer rolls his ankle on the edge of the court. It's one small thing that stacks up with all the other small things, but it's not a storm too big for the band to ride out with each other. However, they will be riding out quite a bit on the city roads, and rolling with some changes for the night before they can get Alan home, as the circumstances of the day add insult to injury. It's a headache-inducing game of 'hot potato with cars'!

_"Ow!"_

The shout ripped across the court from the edge of the asphalt stretch, where Alan Gratzer ran to retrieve the runaway basketball before it could lodge itself in the bushes along the fence on that particular stretch.

Everyone had seen what happened following the rebound, watching with the ball bouncing out of play, so nobody blew the whistle, even when Alan tried to save it. They'd seen Alan's ankle invert as he impacted the ground with his foot on the painted edge of the asphalt, which stood three inches above the grass bordering the court. It was very slippery from the torrential downpour that had stopped just and hour before, and the sliding of the bottom of his shoe across the surface was just enough to put him on unstable ground.

They'd seen the very tall drummer fall down to the ground, but also him break his fall on his hands before collapsing all the way, and if they couldn't tell whether or not Alan was hurt, Alan wasn't very sure himself.

"Timeout?" asked Tommy.

Slowly, Alan righted himself on the knee of his good leg, planted his right foot, and tried to get up on it. That was when he grunted and went back down.

_"Shit..."_

"Timeout!" called Bruce as Alan then crawled to the side of the building and pulled himself up on his left foot.

"I'm out," he called as he hobbled along the wall, hopping on one foot part of the way inside. "The rest of you all can stay in if you want."

By that point though, they'd all stopped, and nobody had interest in that particular game anymore. The repeated blows were beginning to take a toll.

"Bummer," groaned Kevin, stretching out each syllable. "We got _two_ down now."

"Hey, that's less time out of the studio," suggested Tommy. "Not as many pickup games to include all of you guys and all the engineers."

On the sidelines, Gary bit back a sigh before getting up and following Alan inside, with Bruce and Kevin on his heels. More time without a break and shorter breaks from the recording process when he couldn't even participate in the fun to channel out frustration and pent up energy sounded like hell to him -and everyone else. He was just glad that the brace on his left elbow didn't restrict him from angles that allowed him to record solos.

"It's not your fault, Alan," he offered glumly, noticing Alan's abashed expression as they went in to find him sitting on the couch in the living room with a bag of ice from Liz.

"It could have just as easily been Kevin or I," added Bruce. "It ain't gonna be pleasant, but we're not gonna hold it on you."

Alan sighed and nodded a silent thanks to his bandmates. The next couple of weeks were going to be unpleasant enough without having it dragged over his head. However, it was an accident entirely, and there wasn't any going back, so he couldn't be upset with anyone or anything.

They hung out for a few minutes for the initial throbbing to settle, and for a good length of initial application of ice and elevation. Liz brought him ibuprofen to get a jump on the inflammation, the first aid kit for him to wrap it up once he was ready, and a plastic bag to put over his foot in case if it was raining again when he left.

"How we looking?" asked Bruce.

Alan lifted the bag of ice off his ankle and slowly flexed it, pulling his toes toward his legs and articulating each digit with a wince.

"To be fair, I wasn't expecting that to feel nice."

"It's not blowing up." Gary walked over, holding his arm bent at his side in the brace and loose sling that kept him from extending it. "Still sprained. May not need the ER, but you probably should get it checked -maybe get an idea of how soon you can get back on it."

Alan shared a devious grin with Gary at his last remark. He wouldn't play on it any sooner than wise as Gary might, but he definitely would get back after the minimal downtime if he felt stable enough.

"We could make bets on how soon he'll be back in play," joked Kevin.

"Let's see, it's Alan; he'll follow the times for how often he should do ice and all the range of motion exercises, so he'll be good in a week." Bruce grinned as he watched Alan open the kit and select an elastic bandage to begin winding around in a figure-eight motion around his heel, down his foot to above his toes, then above his ankle bones. "Ten days at the most."

"Yeah, Alan's good about that; I can't argue with your guess. See, it's no fun guessing on him." Gary shook his head, then cracked up as Alan started laughing too.

"Wanna go to urgent care right now? While it's open to non-emergencies?" Bruce tossed his hands up. "We're done playing today by this point anyway, and I'll give you a ride."

"What the heck? Probably shouldn't play drum pedals for a couple of days anyway, until I'm good for partial weight bearing, and -uh-oh..."

Bruce turned serious. 'Uh-oh' had taken on a more serious connotation with looking out for Neal during his recovery, as Neal was less likely to use it over small stuff than swearing and grumbles. If the innocent sounding phrase was uttered, it meant shit was about to hit the fan pretty quick. 

"What is it?"

"We all came in cars today because it was raining earlier, and none of us got rides together," Alan realized.

"Yeah?" asked Kevin.

"Which, if I can't drive, means we're gonna end up playing hot potato with cars, aren't we?"

Gary groaned, and a moment later, Bruce and Kevin did too.

"Well, it _could_ still be worse," Bruce tried mournfully as he helped Alan up and guided him on the hobble to the car.

"It probably will at the rate we're going lately."

The end result?

Before anything more crazy could happen, Bruce drove Alan to the nearest urgent care center in town -one they'd become familiar with from previous incidents, from basketball and other needs alike. 

Their original battle plan, quickly sketched out before driving out, was that while they were gone, Gary would drive Alan's car to his house to drop it off while Kevin followed in his own. That way, Kevin could take Gary back, and all they'd have to worry about at the end of the night was having someone drive Alan home.

Unfortunately, the pressure had only increased since Gary's injury -which limited him to only playing half an hour at a time -and Tommy was in a rare, world class mood once Alan and Bruce were gone. He wanted Kevin and Gary there and getting as much work done as they could physically manage while they were down three, counting Neal in with the urgent care crew.

So when he caught wind of the plan, he pitched a fit. Nobody dared to piss him off any more; thus, Alan's car remained stranded at the studio. And Bruce and Alan didn't find out until they got back in at 9:00 o'clock at night, because the urgent care was packed and it took a two-hour wait for an hour-long appointment.

"Hey, that still looks tame compared to my ER trip a couple of weeks ago," said Gary when they got back. A couple of trauma patients had come in by helicopter that day two weeks prior, and he'd waited five agonizing hours with his broken elbow before finally being taken back -two of which he had to wait before he even got triaged.

"Bless your heart," Liz teased him.

Bruce and Alan were lucky enough to arrive to a low-key period, when they'd stopped recording to break for dinner. They were doubly lucky for that and Liz having saved plates for them, as they came back starving after their long wait to get Alan's sprain checked. But as soon as Bruce was finished, Tommy swooped him off to the recording booths.

While Tommy held Bruce hostage under the condition that he get down at least one bass line on one track that Kevin and Gary finally finished their own parts to before they could go for the night, Alan enjoyed the company of talking to Gary while they decided to help Liz clean up.

Unfortunately, Kevin had to go home as soon as he could, as he still had plenty to deal with in his woes there. That left Gary alone with Alan, unable to help him while Bruce was tied up. So they stayed in the kitchen, talking while Alan sat with his injured leg stretched out and elevated on an extra chair, applying ice in the intervals recommended.

"Maybe we could ask Bruce if Neal's feeling well enough to drive in and help me get you and your car home?" asked Gary. "We'd get to talk to him, but he wouldn't have to deal with any of the stress in here."

"Didn't Bruce say he took off this morning to go home to Illinois for a few days?" Alan winced. "Aw crap, I really picked a great day to do this too, because Bruce has to pick _his_ car up too."

"Okay, guess we're having a full-out party in our cars tonight then," Gary concluded.

Alan teased. "Pity it's not you who did your ankle in -you could play guitar in the backseat and entertain at least one of us!"

"Hey!" Gary held up his braced elbow with feigned indignation. "That's dirty, Alan; I'm already incapacitated!"

"Hey, I gotta save some part of my name after today!" 

Alan and Gary promptly began swinging one-armed haymakers at each other from their chairs -Alan pinned his left arm behind his back to make it fair for Gary -pretending to fight, until Liz came over, pulled the bag of ice off Alan's foot, and threatened to bust it open and pour it out on both of them.

"I'll break this cat fight up before you manage to hurt yourselves again without trying!"

"Hey!" Gary protested, running for the sink hose.

_"No!"_ yelped Liz, running after to try snatching it from him.

"No!" Alan repeated, "it was raining hard when we first came in today -we already got rained on once!"

Five minutes later, they were cleaning up again, all with wet hair, and Alan had completely forgotten about the dull throb in his twisted ankle -or the pain of losing his main escape.

When Bruce was finally let free, Tommy invited Alan to figure out how things were going to be for him and what he could help with until he was ready to play again. With Alan and Tommy's blessing, Gary and Bruce got the game of musical cars started. 

First, Bruce drove home and dropped his car off at his house, which wasn't far from the studio. Gary followed in his car, and gave Bruce a ride back to the studio to pick Alan up and swap cars. Alan was waiting to go home by the time they arrived, and Bruce drove him and his car to his house across town to drop both off for the night. Gary parked and helped Alan hobble inside and made sure he was all set.

From there, Bruce got back in Gary's car, rode with him back over to their side of town, got dropped off at the park-and-ride station where Neal left his car on his way to the airport, picked that car up, and drove _it_ home!

He was just in the door of his house and putting away his rain gear from the morning when Neal rang his phone, letting him know he was in for the night at the hotel and doing okay -if having a little nervous spell and keeping himself grounded.

"How long did the storm delay your flight this afternoon?"

"Three hours," said Neal, "because it was moving the direction I was going, so they had to wait for that to clear too. Everything after that's been fine so far, aside from whatever the hell got me for a second just now. I'm hoping when I actually wake up in different scenery it'll be alright."

"I hope so too," Bruce sighed as he internally questioned if the band in all entirety didn't need a vacation and short change of scenery to break their spell of bad luck.

"Did I miss anything interesting?"

"Alan sprained his ankle today, and Gary's still down with a broken elbow. And getting Alan home with his car was twice the production it would have been because Tommy got a little testy with us. You decide if that was something significant or not."

"I wondered why you sounded so grumpy. Not that grumpy sounds but so strong on _you,"_ Neal quipped. "And you said Kevin might as well have jinxed you and Alan when Gary went down. Now Alan's hurt, and assuming you had to deal with most of the car-swapping-"

"-I did."

"Well, maybe that was your part of it," suggested Neal. "Don't prove me wrong. Alright, I'm definitely not missing a thing. Later, Brucester."

"See ya when you get back, Trout."


	4. Ankle Sprain and Torn Tendons (AGAIN!) -Gary Richrath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Installment 4: "You haven't even gotten out of the elbow brace, and now you got this?" "Do I even want to know the full list of injuries from while I was out?" ...Three weeks following Alan's ankle turn, it's both his and Gary's fifth day back on the court, and Neal's first day back in the studio -for a return just in time to witness as Gary renders himself incapacitated again the same week when he comes down from a jump in the wrong position.

"Consolo, two points!"

A happy shout erupted across the court at the call of the benched engineer keeping score as Tommy stole into an open space while Bruce was hit by a sudden leg cramp. Then, while Bruce called a quick timeout to walk it off, Tommy ran to the side to switch with the other one of the two engineers left who were capable of playing for the time. 

"I got one in. That's all I need," he said. "I gotta check on the guys inside real quick anyway."

Not just one, but _three_ engineers were currently out from playing injuries -one as simple as a broken toe, to one as extreme as a torn ACL. 

But after a month down, Gary made a triumphant return to the court at the start of the week, and was now on his fifth day back in. His elbow was still in a stabilizing brace, but his arm was free from the sling that kept him benched. Alan returned to play at the start of the week too, with a completely healed ankle, and no noticeable, lasting laxity in the joint.

As ecstatic as they still were to be back in the court again by the end of a long week, nobody could have been more happy than when they saw Bruce walk in with the snarky person they'd been missing for two months. Or for the fact that Tommy had gone back to being their usual easy-going and playful manager again, rather than the grouch he'd been in the recent past.

"I've come to reclaim that duty," said Neal matter-of-factly, once he'd managed to break free of the sudden commotion over his first reappearance, at Bruce's warning of the others not to overwhelm him.

"We don't need to go too hard right as soon as we get back onboard," declared Bruce, before they quickly shifted into teasing each other and arguing over some bet Kevin made that Gary would 'boo-hoo' whenever Neal got back -the outcome depending on whether or not Kevin did too.

Neither did. But they could agree to Bruce's warning, and had said the same for Gary and Alan at the start of the week. Now they'd been back at it long enough to at least suspect they were in the clear.

"Alright," called out the engineer announcing the game and Bruce walked back on the side and into play. "Richrath and Gratzer are approaching even with Cronin's team as the clock runs down -they can win it with a three-point shot to round out their return with a victory to end the week -or will Cronin and the engineers turn the tables leading into next week's tournament?"

"Come on, guys; let's do it," called Bruce. "We got one more thing to celebrate!"

"It's a shame basketball doesn't use the same sound effects as baseball," the engineer piped up. "I'd have an organ set up for Neal out here, and we'd have a heck of a time with it!"

"I'd hate to hear the sound effects from awhile ago," said Tommy, coming back outside to watch after checking on the keyboardist.

"Alright, and..." The engineer called them back into play.

Alan threw a rebound, which Kevin grabbed hold of. Bruce managed to swoop in under and bounce the ball away from him. Gary caught the bounce and hauled for the three point line with both Kevin and another engineer chasing him, and Alan running over to give backup.

The engineer tried to swoop in as Bruce had, and Gary spun around, flinging himself upward into a jump before he was entirely ready.

The ball swished through the net smoothly, and Bruce let out a momentary victory cry, just before Gary let out a much less positive noise as he came down from his jump with his left knee locked, and on top of Kevin's shoe, turning his ankle and wrenching his knee both as he fell to the ground.

"Man down, man down! Everyone, be careful," warned Tommy. "Watch where you step!"

In his side view, Bruce saw Gary start to prop up on his elbow and immediately lie back down. Then he caught and threw the ball to the side toward the boundary and turned to face Gary.

"He's not getting up -crap! Timeout!"

The two engineers with Kevin hadn't heard it while excited and caught up in the action; especially with time still left on the clock and a chance to regain lead. Either that, or they were starting to become desensitized with as frequent as 'timeouts' were happening in the current session. Whatever was the case, they didn't even react to Bruce's call, and started running to retrieve the ball.

"Timeout," repeated Tommy, searching for the whistle, which had come unclipped from the hem of his shirt at some point.

"Guys, TIMEOUT!" Alan ran over to the side where it had fallen off -being comically over-aware of where the pavement platform ended -grabbed the whistle, and blew it as loud as he could before running back to Gary. "Time _out!_ He's incapacitated ...again."

"Gary, are you okay?" Kevin came running over behind Bruce and Alan.

Bruce sounded mournful. "As much as I wish we did, I don't think we need an answer to that question."

"Hey, KC, run inside and ask Liz to bag up some ice for him," said Alan. "And then bring that out here, okay? You know the drill."

Kevin took off sprinting across the court.

"KC, you'd _better not_ fall down running like that," Tommy warned. "I'm not helping you guys get to the ER just because _two_ of you manage to knock yourselves out."

"Auuugggh..." Gary trailed into a string of muffled profanities into his arm. Alan managed to make out "ankle" somewhere in it.

"You twisted it," he guessed.

Gary nodded.

"Think it's broken?"

"No, I didn't hear or feel a snap," said Gary through clinched teeth. "I know I sprained it though, and real bad too -I felt the ligaments pull. Dunno if I can get up on it."

"Don't," said Alan. "You shouldn't. We'll help you up."

Grimly, Bruce nodded his agreement. "If it's that bad, you better not even try using it."

Just then, Kevin came running outside, followed by Liz and Neal.

By that point, Gary had recovered enough to sit up, and tolerate the pain with a wince as long as he kept his leg entirely still. Bruce and Alan sat on either side of him, slightly behind, with matching, solemn and sheepish expressions.

"I swear, you guys look like three kids who got caught after breaking something, and you're waiting to get chewed out," Neal said flatly.

Gary was too kind in nature to make the snide return that Kevin looked like the tattling younger brother, and Liz and Neal looked like the exasperated parents being led to investigate.

"I think I might as well be." Instead, he rested his chin in his hands, accentuating his glum expression. "Tommy's gonna kill me."

"Well, tough noogies." Tommy rested his hand on his hip and cocked an eyebrow at Gary.

"Trout and I were hanging out inside, and this guy came running inside like the rest of you set yourselves on fire out here," said Liz. "So we figured we'd better come give you some backup. What's the verdict this time?"

"Ankle," said Bruce, passing a bag of ice down from Liz to Gary.

"He went down a lot harder than I did," warned Alan. "As much as I want him to be able to do fine with a quick trip to urgent care, I don't think it's gonna happen."

"Alright, let's check this out." "See what we got going on here, since we're going to find out at some point."

"I gotta get this shoe off anyway; it's already blowing up." Gary gingerly pulled out the laces to keep the tugging to a minimum, before working his foot out and peeling off his sock.

A deep red hematoma already pooled underneath the ball of his lateral malleolus, and the lowest portion was taking on a purple cast as the trapped blood lost its oxygen to capillaries.

"Ugh," Kevin groaned. "I see _right_ where you got it. _Ouch_ , man."

"That's gonna turn some fancy colors alright." Liz hopped up and turned back to the building. "Better jump on that right quick."

"Ice," insisted Alan. "Keep that on for twenty minutes, starting right now. I don't care -we'll stay right here."

"To be honest, I don't think he's going anywhere right now without crawling." Neal peered over Gary's shoulder and took in the sight of the rapid swelling, and the twitching muscle along his calf as the cramping began.

"You twisted your knee too; I think we'd better have you get checked, just in case." Bruce had noticed, and was beginning to look more concerned over the cramping than the ankle.

"Alan was fine-"

"No, you got it _way_ worse than I did," said Alan, "I think we're going to have to take you to the hospital, Gary."

Gary groaned.

"Shit. I don't wanna go back to the hospital. The waiting room sucked last time."

Alan looked at Gary, face deadpan and lax. "Tough noogs."

"Hey, now Gary, if I recall correctly, we already had this talk a month ago," scolded Liz playfully as she came back outside with her hands full. "You still have the brace on your elbow and now you go and do this?"

"Ooooooh!" Kevin grinned like the teasing schoolboy he sounded like.

"Kevin, you be quiet," warned Alan.

"He just got back," Neal noted, "that sucks for him. Do I even want to know the full list of injuries from while I was out?"

"No you don't. And don't follow in his footsteps with going back out just as soon either; I missed having my dirty-joke pal inside." Liz sat down next to Gary with a glass of water, more ice, the splint kit, and ibuprofen. "Keep that ice on like Alan said, and we'll hope by then the shock's worn off. Judging by the time, you might be early enough to beat the evening rush over there and not get stuck so long."

"Don't give them ideas," Neal murmured. "We named our band after a vehicle because it was fast in its time. Whatever velocity warrants the title of 'Speedwagon' nowadays, they'll find it driving to the ER if they think it means less time there."

"Aww, come on, and you wouldn't gun it if you were a hundred percent, Neal?"

"Watch it, KC," said Liz. "Don't bring the mood down too low, or you might take Tommy back down with you all."

"Ohh," groaned Alan, Gary, and Kevin, all shaking their heads and sighing at the thought.

Neal raised his eyebrows at Bruce. "I take it this is something you didn't tell me about?"

"We'll just hope he'll stay in his usual happy-go-lucky mood and doesn't Jekyll and Hyde on you guys while I'm gone the way he did on Kevin and I when Bruce had to take Alan in," said Gary, "and that was BEFORE we had to play hot potato with cars. We were starting to wonder who kidnapped our Tommy and put an evil look-alike in his place!"

"Well, we still have one victory with that," said Bruce, lighting up just enough to offset the dark storm clouds rolling back in. "Neal got a ride in with me this morning. We'll help you get your car home with you when we all leave. That way we don't have a repeat of three weeks ago!"

The weekend passed -with thankfully, no mass swapping of cars -and Gary returned to the studio, with three more weeks on the trusty bench ahead of him. He was in a brace that went up over his knee, as the tendons running down the lateral side of his calf had sustained partial tears, in addition to the ligaments suffering from the sprain, leaving him with an acute case of drop foot.

"That guitar's gonna be your best friend now." Tommy pointed to it as everyone else headed outside for another break on the court. "You can't play out there, but this time, you're at least not restricted in here."

"Yeah, when my work is pretty much done." Gary grinned and shook his head, but hoisted his Les Paul back up over his knee where he sat in the studio, once his bandmates cleared out.

"Think I'd knock myself out with a quick jam the way you guys keep knocking yourselves out with your pickup games?"

Gary perked up and peered over the mixing board at the familiar deadpan tone of voice.

"You know, I'm gonna let you be the judge." He gave himself a self-deprecating look and shrug. "This is the worst session we've had, so this better be the best album we get out there."

Neal slid into the room and sat down at the piano, running his hands up the keyboard, outlining an arpeggio and tossing his hands up to jump over one another until he'd spanned the whole length. Then he looked over at Gary and shrugged.

"Eh, I don't think one'll hurt."

"We're getting better." Gary plugged his guitar back in and leaned forward in anticipation. "That's gotta start somewhere."


	5. Scratched Cornea -Kevin Cronin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Installment 5: As the painful recording sessions of _Hi Infidelity_ are nearing the end, Kevin takes an elbow to the face to send the album out with a boom. He'll have a shiner in the morning, but that's the least of his worries now. And if anyone really needs to be worried, it's Bruce, because everyone else is going to make sure he never lives it down. With the most evil mind in the band having made full recovery, he doesn't stand a chance!

"Get it!" shouted Gary, dashing in and out of the ruckus in the lane. "Get it, Bruce!"

Kevin, playing the other side with Tommy and one of their roadies that were now in as the album's release was days away, knocked the ball away from Bruce and Gary's reach.

Another roadie blew a whistle from the side as Tommy missed a shot, Kevin couldn't catch it in time, and the ball flew out of play when it bounced unchecked off the rim.

"Awww..." he groaned.

The roadie keeping score on the side called them back into play, and the excitement began again.

Though running with a slight hobble from the stabilizing brace still on his ankle, Gary had been medically cleared to play again -this time with a fully healed and unrestricted elbow. And with most of the work down to finishing touches on Neal's end over the final week of the session, they had extra playing time on hand too.

Having all their players back on the court, and the entire band and crew back in the studio, everyone was determined to make the most of their free fun time before it was time to get back on the road again.

It didn't take long for a ruckus to form around the hoop again. Seeing that Alan was open and in a good position to get behind the arc and try for a three point shot, when Bruce got hold of the ball from Tommy, he threw it toward Alan.

What he didn't see was that someone else had come up behind him to try stealing his throw, and when he forcefully pulled his arms back down afterward with his elbow pointed out behind him and slightly to the side, the next thing he felt was a hard contact with the distinctly soft texture of skin.

"Oh, I'm sorry- WHOA!" Bruce turned around to face Kevin, who was covering his right eye. His own eyes nearly popped out of his head when he caught the sight and realized exactly _where_ the point of his elbow had impacted.

"Everyone, TIMEOUT!" he yelled, throwing the ball hard out of bounds. "Timeout, RIGHT now!"

Tommy promptly blew the whistle, and Bruce body-blocked Kevin from everyone else running around until they came to a stop.

"Oh my goodness," said Bruce forcefully, still winded and panicking when he turned around again, this time to fully assess the situation. "KC!"

"I'm okay, I'm okay..." Kevin pulled his wrist ever so slightly away from his eyes, attempted to open them, and immediately flinched and pressed his wrist back across them.

"What do you need-?"

Kevin's face was scrunched from squeezing his eyes shut, but as Bruce tried to get a closer look, he could tell he was squeezing the right eye a lot tighter."

"Aww, sshhhhiiittt... That hurt."

Bruce pointed to Alan and Gary and shouted as he started running across the court to go inside. "You figure out what he's got going on, and I'll go get ice!"

Tommy scolded. "Bruce, it's a damn good thing Lizard knows you guys well enough to make as much ice to keep ready in the freezer everyday as she does!"

"Kevin, let me see you." Gary came over and gently put his arm around the singer's slim shoulders, turning him toward himself and stopping him from taking blind and uneven steps in place.

"Give me a moment, I just need..." Kevin reflexively turned his face toward the ground and away from any further trauma as he slowly opened his left eye -the one that hadn't received impact -and fought the fluttering of his eyelids that wanted to stay squeezed shut.

"No, let me see you right now. Real quick to check that there's nothing serious." Gary cupped Kevin's chin and guided it upward to meet him with a playful, but rueful smile -the kind that really made him look like the older brother figure he'd become. "Hey, we gotta see how big a shiner you're gonna be sporting. You might have the most stand-out battle wound to show off that any of us have had!"

With that, Gary succeeded in pulling a hearty laugh out of Kevin -maybe enough to get some pain relief via serotonin, he hoped.

Kevin's left eye was dry and clear, but tears rolled one after another down his right cheek, escaping through his tightly closed eyelid. The outer swelling was surprisingly minimal for the amount of tears. When he tried to force it open as he'd done with the left, Gary couldn't catch any extreme redness suggesting burst blood vessels or anything debilitating, but Kevin flinched and closed it just as soon. The shock of added discomfort was enough to get his left eye watering too.

"I don't think it's anything too serious," said Gary as Bruce came running back outside with an ice pack. "I'd still like to get a closer look before carrying on like nothing happened."

"KC, I am _soooo_ sorry," Bruce panted as he handed over the ice.

"I don't care," Alan teased, pretending to be serious with the tone of his voice, but winking to show he wasn't. "You're in big trouble, kid. Shame on you!"

"Well, it could be worse." Kevin turned the ice bag over in his hand, trying to push a cube into one place to press against his cheek. "Bruce may look stronger, but I'd hate to have taken a hit from a drummer. Especially with the sharp elbows Alan has, you know? Not that we're gonna let Bruce entirely off the hook."

Bruce grinned sheepishly and looked down to the ground as Alan promptly cracked up.

"Thanks for getting to him before me, Brucester. Now I don't have to hear it from Neal!"

Bruce groaned as he ducked his head and walked away like an abashed dog tucking his tail between his legs. "Neal's gotten just as close me me lately. I'm gonna hear it from both of you whether I apologized or not!"

"No heat or swelling?" asked Gary, quickly brushing his thumb over the sensitive skin just above Kevin's cheekbone to feel for an indication of bruising without touching directly on the injury.

Kevin flinched again and placed the ice on his face then to guard his eye from any further contact. "No, that doesn't feel too bad. My eye just stings -usually it goes away after a couple of seconds, but it's -it's not usually like this, I gotta tell ya. I can't keep it open. I can't..."

"Alright, alright." Cutting off the ramble, Gary motioned for Kevin to follow him. "Let's go inside and get cleaned up. You need to rinse your eye out, and maybe it'll be easier getting a look without the sun in your face."

Kevin trailed closely on Gary's heels on the way in, and they laughed their way from the door to the bathroom after Kevin clipped the doorway with his shoulder on the way in.

"You got one eye closed, and your depth perception just went to shit, Kev." Gary laughed as he stood in the bathroom doorway while Kevin ducked over the sink and scooped handfuls of cold water up to his right eye.

"Hey. _Hey,"_ warned Kevin over the running water. "Pipe down back there! I got the sink right next to me, and I'm not afraid to use it!"

"Yeah, but you won't if you want me to help you out here." Gary handed Kevin a clean towel to dry off with from the hall closet. He watched as Kevin dried off and leaned in toward the mirror as he slowly tried opening his right eye. As before, he struggled at first, but then managed to hold it open and see for himself that beneath the bruising eyelid and surrounding area, his eye was minimally bloodshot.

However, it was not painless, and after two seconds of holding his eye open, it began tearing profusely again. A couple of blinks and another attempt to hold it open again later, his left eye started watering too.

"It's still that bad, huh?"

"When I blink, it feels like there's something _in_ my eye, but I know there's not. There can't be after all that rinsing."

"Let me see what you got." Gary stepped into the bathroom and approached Kevin at an angle to look without blocking the light. 

As soon as he placed his thumb against the side of Kevin's face to encourage him to hold still where he was, Kevin squinted his eyes and his eyelids twitched. Then when Gary moved his other hand toward Kevin's eye, he all but jumped a foot back.

"Quit squirming when I get close to it!" Gary snatched his arm around Kevin's shoulder and started looking for a good sight angle again.

Kevin huffed a sigh. "Well, it's hard enough not to blink when fingers are being poked around your eye _without_ it being hurt!"

_"Tough noogs!_ I have to get a look in to see what -okay, _now_ I see the problem." Gary sucked in air through his teeth. "I thought so when you started reflex-crying. It shouldn't be anything that won't go away, but I think you're gonna need something for it -they're definitely gonna give you antibiotics to put in your eye when you got a scratched cornea."

"Well, if it works and makes it stop burning..."

"What are you guys _doing?"_ Neal popped his head in the bathroom doorway.

"Nothing now, aside from going to the ER. Usually for this, I'd say urgent care, but this time here is a little different."

"Oh boy..."

Gary roughed up Kevin's shoulder affectionately before reaching up to the medicine cabinet above the toilet where they kept the first aid kit. "Actually, before we leave, I'll let you do yourself up with some gauze so it doesn't get to burning any worse. I'm pretty sure they're gonna want you to cover it for a couple of days anyway."

"Sounds good to me; I don't want to open it right now anyway." Kevin pawed through the kit, tilting his head at a strange angle to search with one eye and distorted vision.

Gary leaned in the doorway while waiting for Kevin to unwrap a gauze pad. "What are you up to, Trout?"

"I talked to Liz, had a moment with myself to keep everything from going haywire, and I was reading some of Tommy's notes and deciding what I wanted to do on the organ over Kevin's little last-minute piano ballad, but then I heard you two going on in here _arguing like kids_. I had a pretty good feeling something was up, with both of you in the bathroom at the same time for several minutes with the door open." Neal shrugged. "Did he poke his eye out playing basketball?"

"Uhh, close." Gary peeled off some weak-adhesive medical tape from a roll while Kevin held a gauze pad in place over his eye. "'Poke' might be an understatement."

Kevin winced as he pushed a strip of tape down over the bruising skin around his eye. "Yeah, that'd just a _little_ bit of an understatement alright. I'd say it was more of a bash; let's put it that way."

"Sounds like a pretty gruesome consequence for an activity that's supposed to be fun, or at least according to you guys," Neal deadpanned. "I'm trying to figure out how that would have happened."

"Not in a way I'd have expected it to, to be honest, I gotta tell you."

"Yeah, I wouldn't have expected that either." Gary finished packing the kit back up and put it away. "Alright, let's go get this ER trip over with. It could be long enough depending on how today's going with trauma calls."

"I suppose you were about to ask me to drive you guys so you don't have to worry about parking fees... And ask me to pick you up later."

"It'd be really nice of you." Kevin gave a weak, one-eyed smile at Neal and set Gary off laughing when he dramatically faked sniffling and rubbed below his makeshift eye patch at the tear tracks.

"Oh, Gary," he said, breaking into a fully-melodramatic impression. "It -it's so wonderful having Tommy back as himself again. He won't attack us for dealing with the cars before sundown!"

Gary grinned and pointed to Kevin. "See, you get your payback right there, because you know who'll be having to deal with it!"

Neal sighed and shook his head, but grabbed his car keys and motioned for Gary and Kevin to follow him.

When he turned around to watch as he backed the car out into the street, he got a closer look at the forming hematoma on Kevin's face around the gauze as he and Gary piled into the back.

"So what the hell did you manage to do to yourself, KC?"

"Got an elbow jabbed in my eye," said Kevin, mashing the ice pack against his face again. Thank goodness I didn't get it in the nose, or there'd be blood everywhere.

Gary shook his head with a sigh. "Don't even start on that -the blood would be the least of your worries. He's got a scratch in the cornea so bad I can see the abrasion line without the doctor putting in those eye drops that make your eye glow green."

"Uh-huh," Neal hummed, shifting into gear and accelerating down the road. "So who did it to him? Was it _you_ , and your guilty conscious is having you take care of him right now?"

Gary blushed and shook his head.

"It wasn't?"

"No -I promise!"

"Well, that's good for you. Having done yourself in twice in two months, I'd think if you were born a girl, your name would have been _Grace_."

Kevin shrieked with laughter as Gary reached forward over the seat and swatted Neal's shoulder in retaliation.

"So," Neal continued, _"who_ did it?"

"It was Bruce," said Kevin. "If it wasn't for the injury inflicted, I'd feel worse for him than myself. His reaction was great. Like a guilty dog that got caught digging in the garbage can!"

"What, he didn't have the Golden Retriever impression down well enough already?"

"We'll give him a hard time for it," said Gary. "When we get back from the doc -and after he and Alan play the car shuffle game again. Neal, he's gonna ask you to come live with him again just so there'll be someone there to get the rest of us off his case!"

"Well, while I still question spending a night every now and then with him, he knows I won't do that for _this."_ Neal lifted his chin and set his head back on the restraint with a smug look. "I pity him, though. It's going to be fun to watch. Finishing this album up on my own'll be more interesting than I expected."

"Whoa!" Kevin exaggerated a double-take. "Well, I think it's official! You're a hundred percent better now, Neal. The entire time we have been in this car, you've been just _evil!"_

Gary just laughed as he leaned back with Kevin. "Just in time for someone else to have a problem. Welcome back, Trout!"

Neal just continued to smirk to himself in the front seat.

"Didn't think I'd be eager to say it, but it feels good to be back."


	6. Broken Fingers -Kevin Cronin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Installment 6: "...Every time I asked last week, you told me all my instrumental parts were good. So if you want me to redo any now, remember, I didn't say that -you did." With the hard times and painful troubles of the Hi Infidelity sessions well behind and trailed by massive success, REO returns to the studio in search of some Good Trouble to get up to. It doesn't take them long to find it, but maybe it comes with a side-effect of big trouble nearing the end of the sessions. It's a good thing that Kevin Cronin is only on rhythm guitar duties, and that Gary Richrath has the chops to cover any last-minute rhythm retakes as well as his leads, because he already has to answer for how those two fingers on Kevin's right hand got broken!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, the MTV special for Wheels Are Turnin can be referenced if anyone has a problem with Liz's characterization. She pulls some dirty jokes and is considered "one of the guys", and that's how I did her here. Kevin actually appeared in an interview on Entertainment Tonight (clip on the band's Facebook) in 82 in the sling of shame for his broken fingers, and in the MTV Good Trouble special, Gary admits fault to that happening.

In a frantic attempt to stop the ball from flying off the court, Gary flung himself into a full-sprint toward the sidelines. He knocked the ball back into bounds, and to break his speed, had to spin himself twirling in uneven circles as he continued stumbling off to the side, where he collapsed onto the bench to come to a stop -and landed just shy of falling off the seat and sitting down hard in the mud underneath.

Neal sighed dramatically from where he sat on the other end of the bench. 

"We've got _'Grace' in action_ over here."

Gary tried to force a baleful look through snickering as he turned around and ran back to the court. 

Despite Neal taking to teasing him, nobody between the band and the crew were having a particularly well-coordinated day on the court, and there had been plenty of near-misses and small accidents already. 

First, Alan's shoe came untied, and when Kevin unknowingly stepped on it, Alan fell forward and broke a near-face plant on his wrists. That resulted in a short timeout -one minute for Liz to bring paper towels to the door so he didn't drip blood through the house portion of the studio, and five more to clean himself up, slap on some gauze pads and tape, and get back outside to keep playing. 

After that, Bruce took a similar move to Gary's latest kamikaze onto the bench and ended up stopping himself with his palms against the wooden fence. Then they'd had to call a ten-minute timeout to dig splinters out of his hands. 

Later, Gary's guitar-tech went down on his rear end when the head engineer and producer, Kevin Beamish, backed into him hard. As soon as he got back up and they knew he was okay, it brought the house down. They'd all collectively made some awkward motions to keep from falling after randomly losing balance. At least none of those warranted timeouts, or injuries to anything other than their individual sense of pride.

Even Neal hadn't escaped it on the sidelines. It had barely been ten minutes into the designated two hours for play that the ball flew out of bounds and bounced down at just the right angle to slam down on top of his head and make him see stars for a second. To which he then made the snide remark that it was just one of many ways his bandmates were doing a number on his now-noticeably thinning hair.

Tommy was confined to the bench with Neal, as he'd thrown out his back in an unfortunate incident a few days prior. Not on the court, but as the result of losing a fight with a patch of very slippery mud in his backyard while taking out the trash, following the washout the last week had been. He chuckled with Neal over Gary's less than graceful landing on the bench as Gary ran back onto the court and in the action.

As many near-misses and small incapacities they'd suffered, after the 'high incapacity' and mental agonies of _Hi Infidelity,_ it was all 'good trouble'. And there was no joke to be made spinning off their tentative album title this time, because that was exactly what they'd planned on. _Good Trouble._

Good trouble. It was something they'd come to know well on the road after their massive success and call for sold-out headliners at arenas holding thousands -sometimes tens of thousands of people -and the endless freight train of a party that came with it. When taken too far, it could come with a hangover of ending up in big trouble, but was generally harmless compared to some of the other wild aspects of life on the road in the rock and roll industry. Nobody got hurt, and nothing got broken -or at least nobody got hurt seriously enough to call for medical attention, and anything broken was easily repaired or small enough to be easily replaced.

And so far, the same concept had carried out on the court through the majority of the recordings. Just until a couple of weeks ago, when a couple of rehearsal roadies and an engineer got hurt more seriously, the worst of the injuries they'd endured were scrapes, a broken fingernail, and one nosebleed, and nothing had inhibited anyone vital to the recording process...

...Until now, when Gary threw the ball hard across the court toward Alan, and being just slightly off-center, sent it colliding straight into the very tips of Kevin's outstretched fingers.

The impact visibly sent a shockwave through Kevin's hard, and he doubled over clutching it instead of trying to grab the ball and score points.

"Aww, shit - _shit_... Holy moly..!"

_"Uh-oh..."_ Gary did a double-take at Kevin's current position, eliciting more double-takes from Bruce and Alan with his chosen expression as well. "That's my fault. Timeout!"

Tommy blew the whistle after him from the side. _"Timeout!"_

Everyone watched what felt longer than it was, waiting to see Kevin shake his hand out at the wrist, flex and extend his fingers a few times, and then call out that he was ready to get back in -as what usually happened. 'Shakin' it Loose', they now affectionately called it, in reference to one of the more upbeat songs spawned from the pain of the previous album. When they saw him flinch as he presumably attempted the second step and begin walking off to the side instead, they realized that this time was a little too serious for that.

Bruce took long, quick strides off the court to the door, leaned in, and called out: "Lizard, we might need a little help in a moment again!"

"Aaaaiiiii...." Through a cringe and gritted teeth, Kevin whimpered under his breath as he walked. He held his arm out at his side, hanging his hand limp at the wrist and shaking it around in the air.

Alan ran up behind him and grabbed his wrist, stopping him in his tracks as well as the motion.

_"Stop._ Shaking it's only gonna make the pain worse if you're really hurt. Can you bend them?"

"No, I can't move them right. They're broken. I can tell." Breathless, Kevin tried to speak in a controlled tone as he shifted to clutch his injured hand by the wrist with his other, then held it above his head to try to direct as much circulation away from his fingers as possible. Physical exertion had his blood pumping full-force to the farthest reaches of his body, and as a consequence, the swelling and pain was coming on at full-speed with a pounding throb in his fingertips.

"Holding that up isn't gonna be enough alone," warned Alan. "Not with how sensitive hands are. In the house. You gotta sit down and relax."

Though not _nearly_ as frantic, Gary approached Kevin looking almost as shamefaced as Bruce had looked when he caused Kevin's last notable injury. "Which ones did I get?"

"Three and four," said Kevin. "Right hand. I guess I could still play guitar if I had to redo a part, but I dunno if it'd feel too good."

"Aw, damn it. Sorry about that, KC."

"Well..." Kevin exhaled hard through his teeth in discomfort as they made it inside and he dropped down on the couch, still holding his hand up. "I guess it still stands that it's not a recording session until someone gets hurt. Made it just in time at the end here."

Ten minutes later, everyone else had relocated inside too, and Liz was sitting next to Kevin on the couch with his hand elevated on a pillow across her lap. Kevin had his hand pressed straight against a flat, wooden spoon, and Liz was tearing strips of two-inch wide medical tape -which was already looped around Kevin's injured fingers, splinting them against each other, and holding them both straight against the spoon. Now she was working on immobilizing his wrist until a medical professional could determine the severity of the fracture and whether or not he could get away without a sling.

"What's going on in here now?" asked Neal.

"Lizard is temporarily immobilizing my hand against a wooden spoon," said Kevin, "because we found out that the best item that would support my hand and keep my wrist straight was something that had a flat piece and a long handle."

Liz shrugged as she sent Neal a smirking side-eye.

"We're _spooning,"_ she offered jokingly.

Alan whooped from the kitchen doorway, and Gary and Kevin promptly started laughing too.

"Alright, y'all... Don't tell me all of you are jealous of this guy now. It didn't happen without a fair amount of pain."

"Maybe I would be jealous," Neal started, before dropping his voice flat and dark. "If spooning were my kind of thing. And if it weren't at the expense of the magic fingers I need to protect. Look at it this way -he can still hold a guitar pick, but I need _all_ fingers on the keys."

"See? Last week in the recording process," said Liz. "All hands on deck; all fingers on the keys!"

"All fingers _stroking_ the keys," Neal corrected, before they both cracked up like two vulgar high schoolers.

"It's pretty funny." Kevin tried to move his hand against the medical tape and the spoon, and found himself unable to. "You know, I gotta say, I never expected that an actual spoon would be involved in spooning. This is an interesting new take on it we're starting here."

"Ah-ah," scolded Liz. "I haven't ever used a spoon for this either, and you'd better not need to do this a second time. You're gonna go from getting up to 'good trouble' to being in some BIG trouble!"

"I'd say that's just a side effect you risk having." Neal shrugged.

"Getting up to 'good trouble', it's one of our favorite drugs," Gary joked.

"And YOU are ALREADY overdosed and in big trouble now!" Liz pointed to Gary with one hand and patted Kevin on the shoulder with her other. "Better look out; I know you don't trail far behind him when it comes to that!" She checked that his fingers and wrist were immobilized against the spoon, and pressed on his exposed fingertips on the other side of the tape to make sure it wasn't on too tight. "Are you comfortable? Not gonna end up with blue fingers? As they say cut-off circulation to the hand is the biggest complication with spooning."

"It's not a bad consequence for harmless good trouble," Kevin mused. He examined his hand and feigned a playful grin. "Feels as good as it can for being broken!"

"KC, are you _kidding_ me?" Tommy came in from the control room with an awkward, wide-legged waddle, one hand clutching his lower back. "And Riff- _Wrath_ , you too, you knucklehead!"

"I always thought _I'd_ be the first of any of us to end up walking like that; nice to have that switch," Neal muttered under his breath. He was two years Alan's senior, and everyone else with them was Alan's age or younger.

Kevin held up his left index finger at Tommy. "Hey, every time I asked last week, you told me all my instrumental parts were good. So if you want me to redo any now, remember, I didn't say that - _you did_."

Tommy sighed, tilted his head back, and pressed his palm over his eyes, looking more than ever like the frustrated manager he'd become over the last tour. "It's all fun and games until one of you guys get hurt," he huffed, turning to hobble back out of the room.

"It's all 'Good Trouble' until you end up in big trouble," Kevin retorted, putting his good hand on his hip as he spoke.

"Yeah, and you'd better be glad you already edited the crazy acoustic strumming on 'Stillness' a couple weeks ago, because that would have hurt like a bitch regardless of what you did." Bruce shook his head and winced. "That fast strumming goes through your entire hand once the strings get buzzing."

"You know what you'd really better be glad for? Is that all your parts are done, except for those vocal parts you wanted to get a smoother take on the chorus for 'Stillness' and 'Girl With the Heart of Gold'." Neal mocked a stern expression and wagged his finger at Kevin. "The expected deadline's coming up. You'll be doing it at midnight when you get back from spending the whole evening in the ER, 'cause we're not letting you out until it's done!"

"Yeah, GREAT!" Kevin laughed sarcastically. "You haven't even seen it, Neal! You oughta have seen Tommy when Alan hurt his ankle while YOU were gone and how he held Bruce hostage!"

"KC, you laughed at me that night, so what goes around comes around. But hey, I have another idea. Look at your hand, and look at the fingers you hurt." Bruce pointed to Kevin's injured fingers, which against the splint didn't look visibly disfigured from whatever had happened. "Maybe you could go to urgent care first, get x-ray's there a lot quicker, see how bad it is, and if it's hopefully just as minor as it looks, maybe they can just splint you up properly and send you home."

"If not, well, being sent to the ER with the initial work done, and considering the kind of name we have on ourselves now -it can't be as long a wait as if we went straight there." Kevin shrugged. "We're not far from the end now with the album; I'm okay with taking the risk."

"I'm all for avoiding the ER myself, and I should probably go with you since it was my doing," said Gary. "Unless you want to punish me by making me sit in the ER for hours."

Kevin did his shrill, comedic laugh impression as Tommy came in and pointed at Gary.

"You know it'd be fair if he did!"

"Yeah, but I don't want to wait that long either if I don't have to." Kevin winced. "I don't like sitting in the ER, period; it makes me nervous."

"Well, if it turns out urgent care says you have to go anyway, tough noogies. God, it's no wonder you all run around like a bunch of 'knuckleheads' with as many tough noogs you _get."_ Neal nonchalantly tossed his keys up in the air as he spoke and caught them as they came back down. "Alright, do you two want me to drive you there so you don't have to hear it from Tommy the whole way?"

"That'd be great," said Kevin, before forcing his voice into the deliberately bad British accent he'd taken to using for humor. "It'd be totally brilliant of you!"

"I'm not sure how much less I'm gonna hear it from _you_ , Trout," said Gary, "eh, but I know whatever you'll give me is what I deserve, so sure."

"Wouldn't you know that benefits come with drawbacks?" Neal motioned toward the door in a loose, comically disinterested shrug. "I'm only offering 'cause I know you're gonna ask me anyway, so let's be real and get on with it..."

[To Be Continued...]


	7. Scratched Cornea (AGAIN!) -Alan Gratzer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Installment 7: ("Last song, people!") _"...Sometimes I wonder if you all aren't TRYING to get hurt so you can show off your scars and medical papers like trophies. Boy, did I start myself a band full of hooligans back in the day..."_ It's just another day in Neal Doughty's band full of hooligans, except this time, they did the one thing he never would have thought. Alan gets scratched in the eye -with WHAT?! ...The injury itself might be quick to heal, but he'll be lucky if this goes away anytime in the not too distant future! Ridin' this one out with full-on humor crackfic.

With eight months off the road, _Good Trouble_ was fully released to the world as an album, the start of the next journey was in sight, and REO Speedwagon had one week left in the studio. Two days to rehearse, and three days to record music videos and oversee the editing of them.

They were determined to celebrate by making the most of their time to shoot hoops before shooting videos took up most of their time, and save for a couple of roadies and an engineer who were benched on injury, _everyone_ was outside in rotation throughout the day. First the engineers played the roadies. Then while the roadies were setting up, the engineers played management. 

Now while the engineers checked other equipment, Gary's roadie came outside to play with Tom Consolo and Kevin against Gary, Bruce, and Alan. Their favorite team arrangement. Everyone was on-point with their strategies, and the teams were neck and neck.

Alan ran up behind Kevin to try catching the ball for a shoot when he saw it bounce off the rim. His eyes were locked in on the trajectory downward, and he bent his knees to be poised at just the right height to snatch it on its way down, hands up before his face, fingers extended.

Gary shouted: "You got this, Alan!" 

Unfortunately, his cheer might have been the very jinx that threw a small but detrimental flaw into his strategy. He came up too close, and when Kevin came down from his jump, his back collided into Alan's arms, slamming his outstretched hands forcefully into his face.

"What the-?" Kevin shot forward a few places, startled by the unexpected impact on Alan's sharp elbows -which weren't so forgiving when he was so scrawny that his ribs stuck out.

Though, he'd quickly decide that he had the less painful blow. And certainly, the least embarrassing one with what it would lead to.

"OHHH!" Alan cried out, pressing the back of his hand to his eye as the ball then bounced off his side instead. "Okay, timeout! I need a timeout!"

Tommy blew the whistle.

"Oh, Alan!" Kevin clapped his hands over his mouth with a gasp.

"It's fine, that was my fault. I got too close during that." Alan pulled up the hem of his jersey and delicately wiped at the tears spread around his eye and cheek, coming up with one clear eye and one bloodshot. "No freaking out, guys. It's cool; it's cool. I'm just gonna run inside and get this taken care of."

"Wait," started Bruce, trying unsuccessfully to hold a straight face, "Alan, when he backed into your arms, d-did you-?"

"What, he _did?"_ Kevin's eyebrows shot up like a school kid who just heard his classmate curse.

Alan grinned and ducked his head. "I did!"

Flushed with exertion, Gary sent Alan a wild grin as he turned to run inside.

_"Ohhhhh,_ boy...!"

Being nearsighted, Alan chose contacts to correct this vision most of the time by the mid 70s, to which they were all glad, because the entire band and crew had collectively declared that he would break at least three pairs of glasses on the court for sure over a recording session. 

The downside was that if anything hit him in the face near his eyes, he had to call timeout and clean them right away to avoid an infection. And, he was more sensitive to the discomfort of anything getting in his eyes.

"Oh, boy," Alan agreed.

He figured he'd already called enough attention to himself with his mechanism of injury and it was too late to do anything else than laugh it off and play along with the jokes headed his way. And when he ran inside, everyone else trailed behind him, making plenty of noise to make sure everyone there knew they were in earlier than usual.

Gary and his roadie ran into the kitchen to get water, but Kevin and Bruce followed as Alan made a beeline for his backpack, sliding the last few feet across the floor like a batter into home plate.

"What's going on in here?" Neal watched as Alan dug through his belongings, and took note that he was grinning, and Bruce and Kevin seemed to be holding back laughter.

"Contacts case, and my glasses ...aha!" Alan snatched the desired items out from under his street clothes he'd changed out of for play, and didn't even wait to get to the sink or even up from the floor to remove the contact from his traumatized eye.

"I know you all did _something_. Out with it. What's this all about?"

"We had a knucklehead-moment out there," said Kevin, voice trembling as he tried with great pain to keep his dignity. "I don't know why it's so funny-"

"It's pretty funny," Bruce admitted, sucking in a deep breath and pressing his lips together.

"Hmmm." Neal raised his eyebrows and put his finger on his chin. "Let me guess, Alan, _someone_ got it in the eye again? This is just on a small whim."

"Yeah, he did." Holding his cup of water and grinning, Gary made his way back from the kitchen to investigate the aftermath. "Man, Alan, you couldn't get it out fast enough!"

Alan laughed and shook his head as he re-capped the lids and looked up from where he knelt with his glasses in his hands.

"Well, what'd you expect? Damn it, it _hurts!"_

"Okay, then. _Who_ did this? Who poked him in the eye?" Neal narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Gary's impish demeanor, then looked over to Bruce and started to lift a pointing finger.

Bruce played along by running over next to Gary, away from Neal, snickering quietly.

"He poked _himself_ in the eye." Gary hardly got the words out before he caught a look at Alan, who snorted as the laugh he tried to hold back escaped through his nose. That got both him and Gary, and Kevin as well laughing full force.

"Aw, man," Alan groaned, flushing red in the cheeks. "Might as well own it. Yeah, I _did_ poke myself in the eye."

"Oh _really?"_ Neal raised his eyebrows and looked down his nose, pretending to be impressed as he carried out his mock-interrogation. "Well, what'd you poke yourself _with?"_

Abashed, Alan shook his head and mumbled through a voice thick with sobbing laughs.

"Uhhmm... My thumb."

"H-his... o-o-own... th-thu-umb...!" Now Kevin could hardly talk, though as usual, it didn't stop him from trying. "I b-backed int-to'm, 'n h-he..."

Gary bugged his eyes out at Kevin. _"What?!"_

Alan looked up, squinted and curled his lip up in a fake snarl, and with a growl, mimed jabbing his thumb with excessive force in the direction of his reddened eye, as though to deliberately poke his eye out.

_"Yaaggghhh!"_

Bruce's eyes lit up and did the same, before he cracked into a hard guffaw, rendering himself and Kevin entirely hysterical. With that, Alan lost his ability to hold character and started to laugh so hard that he went too weak in his knees to get up from where he knelt on the floor by his backpack. He slowly keeled forward onto his hands, and his arms trembled as his elbows threatened to give way.

"I'm g-gonna cry," Kevin choked. His eyes were shining with tears and beginning to rim in red.

Bruce offered a silent agreement, pointing across the room at Kevin and burying his face in his other hand in lieu of words.

Neal heaved an exaggerated sigh.

"You guys are nuts. Sometimes I wonder if you all aren't TRYING to get hurt so you can show off your scars and medical papers like trophies. Boy, did I start myself a band full of hooligans back in the day."

Having chosen to take a rather large sip from his cup at the most inopportune moment he could have, Gary suddenly sprayed a mouthful of water down his front as he caught an explosive fit of laughter. It visibly came through both his mouth and nose, which effectively set _everyone_ off. Even Neal, who threw his hand out toward the new source of commotion as he tried to maintain his facetious act.

"Alright, now... See? You all SEE what I just said? Just TRY telling me anything different! I dare you!"

_"AAAAAHHH!"_ Liz shrieked from the kitchen doorway as she saw the water droplets dripping from Gary's basketball jersey and dotting the wooden floor around his shoes. "Now you've done it!"

"Yeah, look what you just did -you're gonna ruin the _floor!"_

"You guys are letting him have _way too much fun!"_ Liz put her hands on her hips and mimicked Neal's typical dour expression, before running into the kitchen and diving into the cabinet under the sink for something to clean it up.

Kevin slumped against the wall beside Alan's backpack and howled with laughter, tears streaming down his face. An attempt to lift his hand up to wipe them away fell back down to his side before it rose above his waist.

"Ugh-gh, m-my s-stomach... I c-can't breathe!" gasped Bruce. He managed to summon the strength to point to the hallway door leading to the bathroom with one hand, and give Alan a hard, forward shove with the other. "Go get cleaned up!"

Bruce's shove gave Alan just enough strength to get off the floor, and he promptly took off running full speed to rinse his eye out before he got stuck again. At that, Gary tried to turn and walk for the kitchen to help Liz, but he got stopped short.

"YOU need to go OUT on the porch and STAY there!" Neal shoved him toward the door. "You're not gonna walk around the room and make a mess! Or at least not one bigger than the one you already made!"

"Yeah, no leaving a trail, Richrath!" called Liz. "That's the number one rule in this house!" She set down a roll of paper towels on the couch and marched off to the hall closet to get a bath towel to take outside to him.

"I got it; I got i-it... I'll c-clean it up -whoooo!" Trying to pull himself together, Bruce grabbed the paper towel roll, dropped a bunch on the floor, and began sliding the wad of them around with his shoe. Through small, residual giggling that was only detectable by trembling shoulders and choppy, noisy exhales, he passed an extra one to Kevin, whose face was still streaked with tears.

Trying to settle down, Kevin turned away and stood hunched over with his face buried in the towel, and Bruce kept his eyes focused straight down on the floor. They didn't _dare_ look at each other -they knew that if they did, they'd lose it for sure.

Bruce also went to the kitchen and got a long-handled spoon to pick the paper towels up. He was afraid that if he bent over and something set him off again while he was down, he'd get stuck like Alan had and never get back up on his own!

Neal seemed to agree with his inner fear.

"Bruce, if you start laughing on the floor, I'm not helping you up. _Don't_ let those leave a trail either!"

Kevin whimpered and promptly ran out in the hall to keep himself from having to see Bruce running for the kitchen garbage can with his palm stretched out underneath the soggy paper towels hanging from the spoon.

He turned back around a moment later to see Gary come back inside and grab his backpack on the way upstairs to the other bathroom to change. He had his jersey off and slung over his shoulder on top of the towel, and he held his other hand beside his face like a blinker so he didn't meet eyes with everyone else and lose it again.

But as soon as Kevin and Bruce heard the door at the top of the stairs click shut, they looked at each other, grinned, and started giggling before putting on yet another show. 

_"Walk. Around. The room. And make. A mess!"_ Enunciating in heavy, breathy, clipping syllables with low voices and hanging their lips open and loose in the corners like trashed stoners, they mimicked slow, directionless walking around the room, taking each heavy and exaggerated step to the rhythm of their words. They held their arms out limply to their sides, pretending to be holding dripping wet paper towels in their hands instead of taking them straight to the garbage can as they had. 

Which gave Alan something to resume snickering at when he reappeared, changed out of his basketball gear, and with a still-watery eye.

Neal sent his forehead crashing straight into his palm.

"Did you just irritate it, or did-? Seeing that you changed clothes, I know you think you got your cornea, don't you?" he mumbled, trying to sound fully exasperated, and _no,_ he did _not_ think that the shenanigans in front of him was even the _slightest_ bit amusing. He did _not_ -or perhaps he _did._

Nobody would ever know!

"I actually tore the lens with my fingernail, so I think I did -at least I had that there, or it'd be a lot worse," Alan admitted sheepishly. "It still is weepy, and it feels like I have something in it whenever I blink, so I'd better get it checked and get some antibiotic stuff just to be sure. If it is, it should be better when we start the video shooting in a couple of days, so no big deal. Does that live up to your expectations for what you like to call your 'band full of hooligans', Neal?"

"Well, let me see. One scratches himself in the eye, another can't hold his water-"

Kevin howled again, and Alan clapped his hand down on his shoulder, stopping him from running as he dug his knuckles down through his wild, dark hair and pressed them down hard on his head.

"...the other two think it's the funniest thing in the world -seems about right to me!"

"Okay, speaking of that, you all have done me in with all this laughing -I can't take it anymore!" Bruce made out like he was about to take off running for the bathroom, then stopped short and turned around. "I'm _kidding!_ I'm good." He held his hands up.

Neal pointed at him. "You'd _better_ be kidding. Anyone getting a little _too excited_ and needs a 'potty break' better haul ass down there, because if you already think we're gonna let Alan hear the end of this soon, you _bet_ I'm not letting you live it down if you take it that far!"

Kevin winced. "I think that would have already been a problem ten minutes ago if we did!" That fueled his snickering with Bruce for an extra round.

Alan groaned and held up his hands folded together as if begging. "You guys with the childish humor... please, stop! Gary and I are gonna have a hard enough time living it down already!"

Neal, Kevin, and Bruce all chorused together: _"Tough noogs!"_

"Alright!" Gary emerged from the stairs, having changed back into his street clothes. "Alan, you need a ride to the doctor, don't you?"

"Well, I guess there's no question who's driving the _ambulance_ today," said Neal as he went for his keys. "Because if I didn't doom myself to that by being the one to suggest naming the band after a fire truck, I highly question the ability of anyone else to stay in control behind the wheel after all THAT!"

"You guys have enough collisions on the court as it is," said Liz. "NO collisions in the car!"

"Oh, no..." Bruce sobered up and shook his head. "Now THAT would _not_ be funny."

"No _banging_ in the car!" Alan winked his weepy eye and offered a devilish grin as he resuscitated the playful mood.

"Oh, _nooo;_ perish the thought and shame on you for even going there!" Liz barely managed to finish her playful scold before cracking up and earning herself an affectionate hair tousle.

"Again, you wonder why we named the album 'Good TROUBLE'," said Neal, pointing around the room. "Right here!"

"I'd say that's some good trouble for you alright!" Kevin pumped a fist triumphantly in the air. Then he shrugged. "Hey, you gotta admit, people; it makes for some great stories to tell later -we're gonna look back on this in a couple of months or so while we're on the bus and have it out laughing again."

"And along with all the crazy stories I have about Alan going back to our college days, I can add that I had to drive him to the doctor because he poked his eye out, WITH HIS _OWN THUMB,_ no less!"

"You know, we need to get these music videos next week done with and get 'back on the road again' pretty darn quick." Gary ran his hand through his mass of golden curls. "After eight months of this -I don't think we've ever been off this long."

"We've been off the road way too long for sure; that's the problem." Tommy crossed his arms and pretended to be perturbed as he entered from the hallway. "Apparently I didn't work you guys hard enough, you got bored too quick, and now I have a bunch of stir-crazy kids to manage through making videos. It's gonna be great!"

"Yeah, you let them stay off too long and start they getting into the trouble you get into on the road at home. It's time to go." Neal pulled open the door and swiped his arm behind Alan to give him a firm shove toward the car. 

"Might as well get _this_ show on the road..."


End file.
